Biggest mistake of Congress was its insistence on secularism ignoring 80% Hindus of the country: Veteran journalist Mark Tully.

If Congress doesn’t reject its anti-Hindu… anti-Hindutva… and pro-Muslim policies even now, the party can see its end in next decade.

secularism is a term that hasn’t done anything good for the country: Mark Tully in Goa event.

Upendra Bharti | HENB | Panaji | Sept 20, 2019:: Internationally famed veteran journalist and writer Mark Tully said insisting upon ‘secularism’ while neglecting the country’s oldest Hindu faith and its practicing people was a great ‘mistake’ made by the Indian Congress and which helped of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for it growth.

Addressing a gathering during an event in Goa, Tully said on Thursday evening that Congress’ ‘mistake’ allowed the BJP to rise and impose its version of Hinduism linking Hindutva in India. Tully emphasized that secularism is a term that hasn’t done anything good for the country.

“First of all ‘secularism’ is not the right word to use in this Indian context at all because secularism has a connotation of hostility towards all religions or indifference towards religion and Indians are not hostile to religion and Indians including the majority practicing Hindus are not indifferent to religion in no way,” Tully said.

“The mistake the Congress party made was to continue with this word secularism… that left the BJP free to say we are the party of Hindus and this is Hinduism… The Congress should have found in its politics some place for the Hindu community just as it found for Muslims or others,” he said.

Mark Tully, who was the BBC’s India correspondent for more than two decades, also had some advice for the Congress party.

“I think that today what the Congress should say is that India is a country where 80% call themselves Hindus and we believe that Hinduism, which is natural to India, is a pluralistic religion, a religion which is proud of being tolerant and welcoming to other religions, proud of India’s history,” Tully said while admitting that his views would be controversial.

“That’s what I think the taste of Hinduism in this country should be and I do think that for years and years Congress was playing up that secularism business meanwhile they were completely ignoring the fact that 80% of the country are Hindus,” the Padma Bhushan awardee said.

This bold and positive view of Mark Tully can cast a good light on the anti-Hindu-Hindutva propagation row currently active in the mindset of wide range the morons like Sashi Tharoor to Ro Khanna…. Romila Thapar to Ramchandra Guha.

Tully, who spent decades covering India since the 60s, also said the ruling party at the Centre, which was trying to make the country a ‘Congress-mukt Bharat’, had also succeeded in building a plan of ‘BJP-mukt Bharat’.

“Because all politics has become about Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi. The whole thing is an enormous personality cult. That what should tell you about politics about this country. One of the things he manages is he manages to get people to forget by having some new tamasha and the elections were the classic example,” Tully said.

“There was no discussion about how well or how badly his programmes were. The whole thing was turned into a jamboree about Indian nationalism and Hinduism. Surely the public is entitled to a debate which they couldn’t do this time,” he added.

The connotation as made by Mark Tully obviously able to clear the creepy conspiracy of Congress that traditionally went against the faith and aspiration of majority Hindu interest. Finally, the Hindu electorates retaliated against ‘anti-Hindu’ policies of Congress and the blatant appeasement of Muslims in the name of minority development.

Tully’s silent warning to Congress directs to stop many of its conjectures on Hindutva as traditional ‘anti-Hindu’ trend of Congress and Indian politics has a got a new shape of ‘anti-Hindutva’ fix.

The hints are quite clear and fair. If Congress doesn’t reject its anti-Hindu… anti-Hindutva… and pro-Muslim policies even now, the party can see its end in next decade.